


beautiful how it all pours out (after dark, after light)

by cinnamonfiglatte



Category: Fleabag (TV)
Genre: F/M, One Shot, Post-Canon, Reunions, canon-typical emotional unavailability, canon-typical yearning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 03:53:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21092957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinnamonfiglatte/pseuds/cinnamonfiglatte
Summary: It's six months until she sees him again. She was good during those six months.Or: Fleabag and the Priest run into each other while buying G&T's six months after they said goodbye at that bus station. So much has happened in those six months. They've missed each other.





	beautiful how it all pours out (after dark, after light)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Just a quick heads up, this one's gonna need a content warning for discussions of miscarriage! So if that's not great for you then give this a miss, but felt it needed saying. 
> 
> Also I wrote this in a daze in less than a day and it's unbeta'd and we're all flawed people just looking for forgiveness in this life, which is to say, sorry ahead of time if there are any spelling/grammar/other mistakes.

It’s six months until she sees him again. 

She was good during those six months. She did as she was told and didn’t return to the church. Stood sentry with Claire while Martin moved everything out of their house (because, even if Claire was moving to Finland, that bastard did _ not _ get to keep the house). Took her father to lunch and avoided rising to her godmother’s—fuck, _ stepmother _ now—bait. Provided for Hillary, kept her safe and fed and warm. Started keeping the cafe open late on Friday nights for trivia. Went to therapy.

Even when she missed a period, and then another, she was good. She may have had a minor meltdown to Claire, might have _ considered _ showing up on his doorstep and letting him know—but no. She was good, and she handled it on her own like the grown-up she is. He’d chosen God; she chose this new life.

She thought about Boo. All the time. God, what would Boo say?

_ I get to be the godmother, right? _

Fleabag could almost hear her voice in her head, picture the exact twinkling expression on her face. 

Boo would place both hands on Fleabag’s belly and say: _ Hello, baby!__ I promise I'll never start fucking your dad._

And Fleabag would swat her hands away, embarrassed and charmed in equal measure by the sentimentality, say with a laugh: _ Oh, shut up! It’s not even a baby—it’s, like, a weird little jellybean-alien-parasite… thing. _

_ You should call it Jellybean_, Boo would suggest.

_ Or Hillary_, Fleabag would argue. 

Maybe she could’ve called it Boo.

_ Your tits are gonna look amazing_, Boo would say. _ I’m actually jealous. _

Back in her own flat in a Boo-less timeline, Fleabag sat topless in front of her bedroom mirror and considered her own tits. They did look amazing. Or, they were at least finally kind of _ there. _

Who was she kidding? They looked amazing. 

She prodded the meat of her stomach with one finger and wondered how long it would take for the rest of her body to look _ less _ amazing. 

When she finally sees him again, it’s two months and two weeks after that, and her tits don’t look so amazing anymore—just average—but that’s mostly okay. It sucked, of course, at the time. Claire had taken an emergency flight back from Finland just to make sure Fleabag wasn’t “in crisis” (Claire’s words). There was a week or two where Fleabag started “disappearing again,” according to Claire, but she got through it. She still doesn’t like to talk about it, but she’s pretty much fine now.

Mostly. But she doesn’t like to talk about it.

What was she going to do with a baby, anyway? If she wanted to nurture something, Hillary was_ right there._ And even though she still pretty much thought guinea pigs were shit and useless, Hillary wasn’t like other guinea pigs. Hillary was special. 

Bit of irony that this thing would end once and for all in another miscarriage, though. A version of her from before she ever met him might’ve laughed at that. 

She spots him at Marks & Spencer picking up cans of G&T for himself, which nearly kills her because, in the six months since he left her at that bus stop, her whole life seems to have upended itself every other week with an alarming regularity. Yet here he is, buying the exact same _ fucking _ drinks as always and seemingly completely unchanged. 

And she doesn’t know what to do, so she basically just puts what she’s carrying back on the shelf where she stands and leaves to smoke a cigarette. She’ll buy herself a bottle of red wine later. 

She’s still standing outside working on her cigarette when the Priest exits Marks & Spencer. He doesn't notice her. She’s not at the church so she decides it’s probably fine for her to talk to him.

Yeah, it's probably fine.

Possibly.

She considers her move, because her window of opportunity is rapidly closing as he walks away. 

Her stomach bottoms out. Blood thunders in her ears. She shakily exhales, watches smoke rise just in front of her face. Her mouth feels bone-dry.

“Hello, Father,” she says. It sounds a lot smoother, a lot cooler than she’d anticipated. She gives herself a mental high-five.

He startles, drops his G&T’s on the sidewalk, stares at her through the dark like she’s an _ actual _ ghost. Clutches his heart and everything, the poor fucker. 

After a few tense, frozen moments, he sighs heavily. His mouth quirks into a smile, but his eyes are _ impossibly _sad. 

“_Fuck me_,” he whispers. He runs a hand through his hair. 

She considers saying something snide and stupid and childish, like, ‘I have,’ because she’s _ fine, really, _but these past few months have been shit and a part of her that she doesn’t like very much resolutely blames him for that. 

But she stares into his grief-stricken brown eyes and all she can think about is telling him through tears, six months ago, that she was in love with him—about calling Claire roughly two months ago and wheezing through hiccoughing sobs that there was a lot of blood and pain, and should she go to the hospital, and is this what she gets for being stubborn and not saying anything about this to him?—and she actually just feels like crying again, suddenly.

He shakes his head, leans down to pick up his G&T’s, steps closer to her (but still leaves a respectable few feet of distance between them). “Sorry, how—how are you? How have you been?”

“Fine,” she answers quickly (Too quickly? His eyebrows draw together a little bit, like he’s concerned.). She crosses her arms over her chest. “_Good,_ actually. Really good. I’ve started trivia nights on Fridays at the cafe. It’s fun, actually. Hillary gets a real kick out of it.” 

He chuckles a little. “Glad to hear Hillary’s doing well.”

She stamps out her cigarette and leans back against the brick wall behind her. “So, how have you been?”

“Me?” He seems confused by the question. “Oh, I’m grand. Just…” He trails off. “Actually, can I confess something?” 

“Confess away, Father,” she says, and it’s light it flips a light on in him, because he laughs and tells her: 

“Oh, _ fuck you._” 

She bites her lip.

“I haven’t gone a day without seeing a fox since we said goodbye to each other, until today. I swear, every _ single _ day. They seem to be after me more than ever,” he says. “But today… something’s different about today.”

She puts on her best serious face. “What are you talking about?” she asks. She points just over his shoulder. “There’s one right there.”

He squeals and jumps, turns around to check, and she cracks up. He turns back to her. “Fuck you. No, _ seriously,_ fuck you. I mean it. That isn’t funny.” 

“Not even a little?” she teases. “It’s not even the _ slightest _ bit funny?”

“No, it isn’t,” he says, but now his face is serious but his eyes are light. He shakes his head and scoffs at himself like he’s trying not to laugh, too. His eyes fall on her again and he repeats: “Fuck you.” And then, softly, he says, “I’ve missed you.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that. Of course she’s missed him, too. But it’s so much more than that. She was in love with him. She would’ve had his _ baby. _

(God, she would’ve had his baby. In another timeline, they’re having this encounter and she’s visibly pregnant. What is _ wrong _ with her? What the fuck was she even thinking, wanting to have a baby?)

In retrospect, it’s probably not the greatest response to _ I’ve missed you,_ but she tells him, “I’ve had a miscarriage.” 

The playful mood evaporates. She nearly cringes. 

He says, “Wha—?”

“A real one, this time,” she interrupts. “Not… covering for Claire, or trying to scandalize my stepmother or anything. Just a run-of-the-mill, standard issue miscarriage.”

The Priest doesn’t say anything. He gapes, and he blinks, and he stutters.

She probably shouldn’t have told him. 

“Are—are you okay?” he finally manages to get out.

She shrugs one shoulder. “I mean, my tits looked _ great. _You should've seen them. They were like—”

“No, fuck you, I’m not joking.” 

“_Yes,_ I’m okay.”

“Was it—was it—you know, was it—?”

“_Wow._ Fuck you, of course it was yours.” (She actually isn’t _ one-hundred _percent sure; there had also been that one blowhard lawyer guy who Claire told her not to sleep with that she went and let give her nine orgasms around the same time, but—well. She knows.)

“You didn’t think to tell me?” he asks, his voice a little small.

“I—well. I didn’t want to…” She struggles to articulate it. “You made your choice.” She crosses her arms again. “I was really trying to respect it.”

“But I didn’t know you were… I was…” he shakes his head again, like he’s glitching. “You didn’t think you could win me over again by telling me, or something?”

“Oh, fuck you,” she says. “You chose _ God._”

He doesn’t seem to have a good response to that. He looks ashamed, and he looks resolute. He finally settles on, “I’m sorry,” and, “I had to.” 

“I know,” she says. And she does. Well, she doesn’t, but she does. “I know.” 

They stand there for a second, just in each other’s presence but not quite close enough to touch. She wants to be all over him; she wants to be on the other side of the planet. 

“I’ve really missed you, too,” she tells him. “Think I could come back to the church sometime?”

“Probably not,” he says. She tries not to let that sting, and he clarifies, “Nothing gets past Pam.” 

“Right,” she says.

“But I could maybe come by the cafe sometime, if you—”

“Oh, no, please don’t worry about it,” she assures him.

“Fuck you, I’m still being serious.” 

“Fuck _ you, _ I don’t need you feeling sorry for me just because I almost had your baby.” 

He rolls his eyes and she considers that she’s perhaps being difficult. 

“If you _ want _ to come to the cafe, then I’m happy to have the business, but don’t do it out of pity. That’ll make me feel pathetic.” 

“Okay,” he says. He looks like he means it, but she can’t tell if that means he’ll still come by the cafe sometime or he won’t. 

“Okay,” she agrees. 

The two of them stand there, shuffling their feet. She doesn’t really want to end the conversation there—wants to end it on a better note—but she can’t figure out a way to make it keep going. 

He doesn’t want the conversation to end, either. He takes another step closer to her and asks, “Do you think our baby would’ve been cute, or one of those ugly babies that everyone has to pretend is cute?”

“Oh, fuck off.” But she laughs.

“I was a really ugly baby,” he muses. 

“I was incredibly cute,” she replies. “_Unbelievably _ cute.”

“No way,” he argues.

“You don’t think I was a cute baby?” 

He shrugs one shoulder. 

“You’re an arsehole,” she tells him. “I was adorable.”

He laughs. 

“I loved you,” she says, and he looks at her like he wants to kiss her. “I was so in love with you.”

He inhales deeply. “So it’s passed?” he asks. He doesn’t look happy. 

“No, it hasn’t, it’s just… complicated for me now, in a way that it wasn’t before.” Or it was, but it suddenly feels straightforward again: _she loves him. _"It's easier to love someone when they're right there for you to love. And when you're not thinking about having to raise that person's secret, forbidden child on your own."

“Ah,” he says. “For what it’s worth, I do still love you. And it’s fucking _ awful_.”

She wants to say _ sorry _ but she can’t apologize for it. She just smiles and tries to blink away the tears that brings to her eyes. 

“Do you want to grab a drink sometime?” she finally asks.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he replies.

“It’s fucking not,” she agrees. “Do you want to do it anyway?” 

He smiles.

“I _really _promise we won’t have sex.”

“I have a bus to catch,” he tells her, gently. Takes a few steps back. He could've kissed her, and he didn't. She feels a hollowing out sensation in her chest as he goes, like her heart’s caving in. But as he goes, he tells her, “I’ll see you around.” 

He sounds like he means it. She smiles, but she feels a tear escape from the corner of her eye (the traitorous bastard). She watches him notice, watches him grapple with the urge to wipe it off her cheek and kiss it better, then decide against it. To her credit, she just pretends it's not there. She waves gently and repeats back, “See you around.” 

He hurries off to catch his bus. She stands out in the night air for awhile longer, swiping away at her tears until they stop flowing, then turns to head back into the store. She purchases a cheap bottle of red wine and texts Claire, _ You’ll never guess who I just ran into. _

Claire calls her back right away. Claire _immediately _begins scolding her before Fleabag can get a word in edgewise—she can barely even say hello—and Fleabag just laughs. 

She goes home. She drinks a glass of red wine, and then she puts herself to bed. 

She dreams of foxes. 

**Author's Note:**

> THANKS FOR READING
> 
> I NEVER POST STUFF SO IF YOU HAD THOUGHTS PLEASE SAY SO
> 
> THANKS AGAIN


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